Ursula Archer - Five

He caught on right away. ‘This Estermann guy is a sales rep, you said?’

‘Yes. He sells diet pills to chemists. His wife hasn’t heard from him in a few days. It all fits, Florin!’ Beatrice pointed her pen at the screen. ‘And that’s the son called Felix. I phoned the wife and told her we’d be coming round.’

‘Good. Vogt wants to start the autopsy at twelve, so we’ve got two hours.’ He picked his keys up from the table. ‘Let’s go.’

They weren’t even out of the door before Beatrice’s phone beeped. The tone was making her skin crawl by now; she would have to change it. As soon as the case was over.

FTF. But don’t let it get you down, chin up.

That was all. And it was yet another caching abbreviation; she remembered having seen it on the list. On their way out, she flung open the door to Stefan’s office.

‘Call the telephone company and find out which network the Owner was connected to two minutes ago.’

He looked up. ‘Okay.’

‘And remind me what “FTF” means?’

‘First to find. If you find a cache first, then—’

‘Great, thanks.’

First to find . He had been quicker than her, had worked out that they would use all the means they had to protect anyone his clues led them to from now on. But he didn’t want that; he had wanted to pour acid into Estermann…

And then those sarcastic words of consolation. Don’t let it get you down, chin up . What a sadistic bastard.

‘I think things are about to get even more gruesome,’ she said, as Florin steered the car out of the car park.

He glanced at her sideways. ‘Not necessarily. Nora Papenberg died quickly, but before that he cut Liebscher’s ear off, and we don’t yet know how he killed him in the end. Sigart has already lost two fingers. Who knows what else he did to him before…’

Even though Florin didn’t say it out loud, Beatrice read the message between the lines. He no longer believed they would find Sigart alive.

Five dead bodies in just a couple of weeks. My God .

Stefan phoned shortly before they reached Graciella Estermann’s apartment. ‘Bea? You won’t believe this! The last text message from the Owner – he was connected to the UMTS cell on the roof of police headquarters.’

‘Shit.’ He couldn’t have disappeared again that quickly. Had they driven right past him? Beatrice suppressed the impulse to ask Florin to turn around. There was no point now. ‘Thanks, Stefan. Could you have a walk around and keep an eye on who’s in the building? Just to make sure, I don’t really believe that the Owner is still there, but—’

‘But it can’t hurt just in case. Of course.’

She told Florin what Stefan had said. ‘He’s lurking nearby. It seems like the news blackout is having the desired effect – he’s hungry for information.’ She turned around and peered through the rear window. Behind them was a white Vauxhall Astra with a dark blonde woman at the wheel. ‘When we park let’s pay attention to whether anyone else stops nearby.’

‘Or,’ Florin replied slowly, ‘whether someone’s already here. I mean, I’m sure he’s worked out that we’ll have found out the dead man’s name by now. It’s the logical next step to go and see the widow.’

For the last five minutes of their journey, Beatrice stared silently out of the window. She would have to speak to Kossar again. The Owner’s increasing proximity was an opportunity they couldn’t allow to slip through their fingers.

There wasn’t anyone suspicious around when they got out of the car in front of the house. Nor did anyone seem to be paying them any attention whatsoever. A woman with a shopping basket in one hand and a whining child in the other made her way past them, but that was all.

Graciella Estermann turned out to be a pretty, dark-haired woman in her mid-thirties, who evidently found it difficult to stay sitting down for even a minute. ‘After your call I took the children to school, then tried another five or six times to reach Rudo, but it keeps going straight to voicemail.’ Her accent was audible, but her grammar was faultless. She crossed her arms in front of her chest and fixed her gaze on Florin. ‘What’s going on?’

There were no photos of Estermann on the wall or any of the shelves, only pictures of the two children – as babies, as clumsy toddlers, as school kids with gaps in their teeth.

‘Before we continue, we’d like to ask you to show us a photo of your husband.’

‘Why?’ Rather than showing any signs of concern, she seemed intrigued. Cool, that was it.

‘We’ll be happy to explain once we’ve seen it.’

It was quite clear that she wasn’t happy with the order of the proceedings, but eventually she shrugged and went to rummage around in the bookshelves, pulling out a small photo album.

‘ Madre de Dios ,’ she mumbled, laying it in front of Florin and Beatrice on the coffee table.

Wedding photos. Even the first photo was enough to confirm that they wouldn’t need to keep searching. The Rudolf Estermann in the picture looked very much like the dead man, even though he had been younger and slimmer at the time the photo was taken, as well as having two eyes and a lower lip.

Beatrice and Florin’s silence clearly lasted a little too long, and Graciella Estermann immediately caught on.

‘Something’s happened to Rudo, hasn’t it? Are you going to tell me what’s going on now?’

‘We found a dead body last night, without any identification papers. It seems that it may unfortunately be —’

‘Rudo?’ Her voice had become louder, as if the thought made her angry. ‘Was he drink-driving again? What was it – did he drive into a tree this time?’

‘No. There’s a possibility that he may have been murdered.’

That silenced the woman. She slowly lifted her hands to her mouth, as if to make sure that no sound would escape from it.

‘What happened? Was he killed in a brawl? An argument?’ she asked.

A strange question.

‘Is that something you might have expected?’

A look of slight regret crept across Graciella Estermann’s face, as if she would have liked to retract her question. ‘Not expected, no, but it wouldn’t have been a great surprise.’

Beatrice leant forward. ‘Tell me about your husband.’

‘He drinks a lot and can’t keep his hands off other women.’ She stood up and walked over to the window, then from there to the bookcase. She took a book out, looked at it, put it back again, then picked up another. ‘He isn’t a good man. You can ask everyone who knows him.’ She suddenly froze, holding her breath. ‘But I didn’t kill him, in case you think that!’

They didn’t get the opportunity to respond, as Gabriella Estermann just kept on talking. Within ten minutes, they knew the majority of her life history, particularly the story of her marriage. Estermann had met Graciella in Mexico, where she used to work in a hotel. Everything had happened quickly: love, disillusionment, alienation, resentment. Two children.

‘Well, you don’t look too surprised by the news,’ said Beatrice finally. ‘With a murder case, that does tend to make us a little suspicious.’

‘You wouldn’t be surprised either,’ the woman retorted. ‘Rudo had more trouble in his life than any other man I know. If anyone so much as looked at him funny, that was enough to set him off. If someone nabbed a parking space from him, he would smash up their headlights. He once even punched a waiter who brought him the wrong side dish with his steak.’ She looked at the book in her hands.

Trying to be discreet, Beatrice looked for any bruising on the woman’s arms or face. Nothing.

‘He hasn’t laid a hand on me in a long time, nor the children,’ said the woman with a sad smile. She was really sharp; clearly she had picked up on Beatrice’s train of thought despite all her attempts at discretion. ‘Not like that, and not in the other sense either. He was hardly ever at home.’ Her smile disappeared. ‘To be completely honest, I am a little surprised. I always thought Rudo would end up killing someone one day. Not the other way around.’ Her upper body suddenly seemed to sag, a trace of grief visible in her eyes for the first time.